Bandwidth Data - bmon

I've recently switched broadband supply away from Pipex at a fixed 1mbps
to adslMAX with a projected 6mbps.

I've read enough about wild claims from ISPs not to expect 6mbps but in
an effort to compare and understand figures downloaded bmon to peruse
the data.

On a windows machine I use the simple analogX program, nsl, which allows
readings in Bytes or Bits and gives an average reading shown over a minute.

My windows machines are wifi so I thought my ethernet linux box would
give a better guide but I haven't quite got my head around the bmon
readings and can't find a detailed explanation, I do however appreciate
it does look quite simple.

At http://www.3lanes.eclipse.co.uk/temp/bmon.jpg I have posted a
screenshot after 6 minutes of downloading an ISO image file.

I assume KiB is Bytes and not Bits but under RX what are the five rows
ranging (On my readout) from 147.79KiB down to 24.63KiB, the upper 3
readings all appear to have 4 asterisks whereas the lower 3 readings
have 5, my actual reading at the time of screenshot appears to show
148.85KiB

Also, what are those percentage readings on the 6th line of the RX and
TX rows referring to.

Thanks in advance.

Geoff Lane
Followup-To:uk.telecom.broadband


Geoff Lane

Geoff Lane wrote:
>
> give a better guide but I haven't quite got my head around the bmon
> readings and can't find a detailed explanation, I do however appreciate
> it does look quite simple.
>
> At http://www.3lanes.eclipse.co.uk/temp/bmon.jpg I have posted a
> screenshot after 6 minutes of downloading an ISO image file.

Its an ASCII graph.

The higher the column of asterisks, the higher your current download
rate. The columns will move towards the right as time passes.

Try watching it as you download something. You'll get the idea.

Mark McIntyre wrote:

> Its an ASCII graph.
>
> The higher the column of asterisks, the higher your current download
> rate. The columns will move towards the right as time passes.

Right, that makes sense.

> Try watching it as you download something.

I was watching when I was downloading the ISO image which gave me a bit
of an idea but web pages and emails are actually quite erratic.

What are those percentage readings on the lowest lines of the RX and TX
rows.

Geoff Lane

Geoff Lane wrote:

> What are those percentage readings on the lowest lines of the RX and TX
> rows.

No idea - possibly packet loss? I don't use it much myself so I can't
really say. The manpages are fairly useless... :-)